


Return Again

by Findswoman



Series: The Lasan Series [18]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, Homecoming, Introspection, Lasan, Lasat, Siege of Lasan, Vignette, soil - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 10:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21456916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findswoman/pseuds/Findswoman
Summary: Zeb returns to Lasan for the first time since its destruction and the genocide of his people. A belated birthday gift for fuzzydemolitionsquad.
Series: The Lasan Series [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/967674
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Return Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuzzydemolitionsquad](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=fuzzydemolitionsquad).

It was the soil that did it.  
  
Not that the sights from the _Phantom_’s viewport hadn’t already brought him to his knees, and not just figuratively. Even the first brief glimpse of the once-familiar purple-bronze glow in the sky (it was just dusk, local time) had almost been too much for him. Then there had been that horrible, sickening feeling of blankness, emptiness, _goneness_ that had seized him the moment the cliffs had hove into view—the charred, blunted cliffs. The rubble-choked valleys. The gaping expanses of thirst where the lakes used to be. The crumbled, moldy ruins of Lasan’s once-magnificent capital—his hometown. A landscape that had been torn asunder into its component parts, just as its people had been—  
  
_No. Mustn’t._ He’d staggered against the bulkhead and turned away.  
  
But it was the soil that _really_ did it.  
  
Even on Lasan itself there was nothing like the fine, siliceous, lilac-gray soil of the cliffs surrounding the capital. The cliffs that themselves were home, where he had gone on many a childhood adventure, many a bracing climb, many a maneuver with the Honor Guard. And now, once again, with each step, that same soil was making that same silky _crinch-crunch_ under his footpads—pressing chalkily up between his toes—rubbing itself into his fur. Yeah, there was a reason his people never wore those silly things called _shoes!_  
  
And the _scent_ of that soil! The scent that for years he only knew from the little sack of dust he kept hidden at the back of his gear locker in his quarters—now rising from his every footfall. _The scent of home—_  
  
He sank to his knees; the soil crunched around them, too. Karabast, _why?!_ Why had he come back here in the first place?!…   
  
Well… he knew why, and there was no real use denying it. Hera had told him that the _Ghost_ would be passing near the Coreward edge of Wild Space en route to their next mission. And she had looked at him in that searching, _meaningful_ way of hers—and even though he wasn’t some kind of mystic like Kanan or Ezra or old Chava, he could read in his commander’s face what she was going to ask him: _shall we make a detour to—to—_(come on, be an Honor Guard and _say _it to yourself!)—_to Lasan?_  
  
He didn’t know if it had been something in her voice, or something in her eyes—but, like a karking fool, he had said _yes._  
  
So here he was. Alone—he’d made sure of that—this was no one else’s business, after all. Alone, gazing upward at his broken cliffs, peering outward toward his dead city. Alone with the soil. The soil that would not stop grinding into his feet and legs and knees, entering every pad and joint and nail even though he wasn’t moving. As if to say, _hey, remember me? I’m the reason your people don’t wear those silly things called _shoes…  
  
No, karabast, NO! He was captain of the Lasan High Honor Guard and an officer of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and there _was no way in the Bogan’s own Chaos_ he was going to—  
  
Too late. He sank down—all the way to the ground, this time—and lay there, letting the silky violet grit envelop him. Deeply he inhaled its scent, pressing his face to it so that it coated his cheek and beard. And there he stayed, as the purple-bronze dusk slunk away into night: a son once more in his mother’s arms, a lover once more in his beloved’s embrace. ¶

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDnGOpRYhwo) (words and music by Shlomo Carlebach, sung by Neshama Carlebach).


End file.
